A Little Bit About a Lot of Things

We met friends at the MET Back Bay for dinner a few weeks ago. Located on the corner of Dartmouth and Newbury Street, this place is much homier than the other locations. You walk in to the hostess stand and there is a staircase going up and one going down. Bars are located on both levels. The downstairs level is hopping-you can feel the bass from the music under your feet. We sit upstairs (in the room to the right), which has a steady hum to it as well, but is significantly quieter than the lower floor. We are seated in the middle of the room, but have a great view through the wide windows. It feels as though you are in someones house having a meal, rather than a huge restaurant. We are greeted by our waiter, who is enthusiastic and friendly. We are here on the early side so we have a lot of time to ask questions and get his undivided attention. He gives us some really great suggestions. We start off with the house board ($24) and we choose our cheese and our meats. He recommends a goat cheese, which I tell him I don’t really like, but he assures me that it doesn’t have a strong goat flavor. Indeed it did not.

A really lovely charcuterie plate. Nice ham and spicy salami, toast, honey, olives, and figs. Instead of a bread basket they bring out spreadable cheese and sesame breadsticks- normally when I think spreadable cheese, I think…99 Restaurant, but this is pretty good.

The two men decide to share the ribeye, that comes bone in ($66) accompanied by two choices of steak sauce. They try the New Orleans Pepper Sauce which was reported to be “really peppery” and the Chicago Steak Sauce which was their house sauce. We also get the side salad of cauliflower ($6) which was excellent-different colored cauliflower roasted to perfection. The ladies decided to each get the rigatoni bolognese ($22 for a full sized portion and $11 for a half sized portion). The full size gives you enough to eat with leftovers to take home! I thought that the sauce was pretty good-there was no shortage of meat in the sauce and it didn’t feel heavy after you ate it.

The restaurant had much more of a city chic vibe to it-you almost forget that you can get a burger there. It’s a mix of home-y and modern. The food was quite good, the service was excellent. We would definitely go back again-next time perhaps have a burger!

Met Back Bay

279 Dartmouth Street

Boston MA 02116

617.267.0451

http://metbackbay.com/

Tags: back bay, boston, restaurant